


muscles better and nerves more

by garden of succulents (staranise)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 500mL of Voltaren and six cold packs, Bitty figure skating, Bitty's first visit to Providence, Checking Practice, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Useful and Competent Help, nonsexual physical intimacy, spending the day in bed, total nudity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 23:02:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7660426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staranise/pseuds/garden%20of%20succulents
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bitty seriously overdoes it when he figure skates for the first time in ages, and Jack looks after him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	muscles better and nerves more

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Without Expectation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7514989) by [alocalband](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alocalband/pseuds/alocalband). 



> Originally posted on Tumblr [here](http://des-zimbits.tumblr.com/post/147414967876/okay-so-after-alocalbands-fic-about-bitty-having).

“Oh, lord,” Bitty moaned, throwing himself onto the couch facedown.  “I do not have legs anymore.  I have pins of pain.”

He moved stiffly, dragging himself up the couch with his arms until his legs could lie perfectly flat, and buried his head on the armrest.  Of course Jack had suspected that switching back into his old sport would mean stretching some unused muscles, but he hadn’t forseen it being _this_  dramatic.  Which he maybe should have, given Bitty’s enthusiasm.

When they’d held checking practice on ice Jack had booked time at, a middle-aged woman had conducted a semiprivate figure skating lesson with a trio of teenage girls the next rink over.  Maybe fourteen, Jack had thought, serious and awkward and intense, but good skaters.  He’d only noticed them because during breaks he’d catch _Bitty_  looking at them, with… yearning.  With the kind of hunger he didn’t watch hockey with.  So while Bitty was in the washroom changing out of sweat-soaked clothes, Jack had gone over and requested the coach’s card so he could call her later, ask if she was available for a short-term clinic.

Which had been a good idea, because Bitty on the ice today had been stronger and sharper and _fiercer_ , as Jack and Elena worked with him.  He moved an entirely different way, as a figure skater, shed his shy aw-shucks self-effacing persona and put his chin up, made his shoulders square, looked brave and defiant.  Jack absolutely understood why he made that change, the moment he saw it; the little dip of his chin when he turned his head and the flip of his hand as he moved and a dozen other undefinable things meant also looked _gayer,_ more sterotypical, in a way that was kind of breathtaking.  It spoke to so many layers of muffling adaptation that he put on when he played hockey to keep from being a provocation, a threat, fierce and flamboyant and assertive.  But, well, the fear that kept him cloaked was the fear that kept him freezing up on the ice, and what he wanted was to ease Bitty into being more comfortable in his own skin.

So they’d worked, Elena reminding Bitty what a figure skater moved like, and then Jack moving into his space like a hockey player would.  Bitty, head up and hands trembling, had tried to transform a check into a moment of forceful ice dance, into an interaction he knew the moves to and had control of.

Along the way, he’d figure skated.

That was what had gotten him into this situation, recalling old routines and showing Jack his jumps and spins, lamenting the shorter blade and missing toe pick that made a lot of his favourite parts impossible.  He’d looked weightless, like he could fly; but he’d also put his body into a lot of positions it wasn’t used to anymore.

Therefore, the moaning into the couch.

Jack disappeared into the bathroom for a minute, then stopped by the fridge for a bottle of pre-mixed chilled sport drink and ransacked the freezer for cold packs.  This, at least, was going to stop Bitty from tsking over how much of his freezer he devoted to something that wasn’t food.  “Hey Bittle,” he said, coming over with his arms laden.  “Where does it hurt?”

“Oh god,” Bitty moaned.  “Where _doesn’t_  it hurt?”  He pulled the bottle open with his teeth and slugged back some of the drink.  “Like, pretty much everything waist down.  Glutes and IT band especially. I did something special to offend my left calf. And up my sides all the way up to my armpits.”

“Okay.”  Jack held out the pill-bottle cap.  “Tylenol?”

“You are an _angel,”_  Bitty said, and swallowed the pill.

“I’m gonna pack you in with ice,” Jack said, indicating the cold packs.  “If you’re going to be there a while, would you rather be here where you can watch TV, or in bed?  I’ll bring you your computer.”

Bitty gazed at him adoringly, which was very uninformative.  Finally Jack lifted his eyebrows, bringing Bitty back to earth, “In bed, I guess,” he said, and blushed a little at the innuendo.

 _Yes, lots of ravishment happening here,_  Jack thought as he watched Bitty limp to collect his laptop, bending forward with utmost care and only as much as necessary.  Bitty was going to be sore for days, and Jack had already mentally cancelled checking practice tomorrow.  He gathered his cold packs and medications and followed Bitty into the bedroom.

“I’ve got a pain reliever rub,” he said as Bitty sat heavily on the side of the bed.  “Strip off and I’ll put it on for you.”

Bitty held a hand out for the tube Jack was holding, and he examined it while peeling off his shirt; Jack smiled at the typical Bittle multitasking. “I haven’t seen this before.”

“They don’t sell Voltaren over the counter in the US,” Jack explained.  “Dad and I sneak it down in our suitcases whenever we come back from Canada.  It’s got actual painkiller in it, not just menthol.”

Bitty read over the tube a second more, shrugged, set it down and shucked his pants off.  Jack corralled his clothes and pitched them in the hamper, rescued the tube of gel.  “I can, uh,” he said, he said awkwardly.  “If you’re okay taking off your underwear, I can do your butt too.”  Bitty paused mid-crawl for the far side of the bed, looking a little embarrassed as he considered.  Then he took his briefs off, and was blearily calculating if he could throw them far enough to reach the hamper with his tired arms when Jack took them away and did it for him.  “Lie down,” he ordered.

Bitty did, sighing with relief when he lowered his head onto the pillow.  Jack put a hand on his back as he clambered over the bed, just to give Bitty an idea of where he was, then said, “I’m gonna start at your feet, okay?”

“Yeah,” Bitty sighed, as Jack slathered up his hands.

Being Bittle’s boyfriend was kind of a relief, because Jack was okay doing this sort of thing for friends and teammates, but he knew that a lot of people–weren’t.  Shitty might be okay with this, but Rans and Holster wouldn’t be, and Bitty before they were dating–was body-shy under the best of circumstances, didn’t go with his shirt off outside the locker room, wasn’t comfortable being touched.  But now that they were dating, all kinds of things were suddenly allowed, like rubbing his gel-slick hands down Bitty’s calf, cupping his feet in his hands for a minute.  It was as though, having considered Jack at liberty with his thighs for sexual purposes, Bitty presumed it natural that Jack should rub Voltaren all over them also.

Jack kind of understood it, but he kind of didn’t.  People and nakedness and bodies and sex and embarrassment were weird.

As he was putting painkiller on Bitty’s glutes, Bits murmured ruefully, “I had plans for all the sex we were going to have this week, too.  M’sorry, baby.”

Jack kept rubbing, the first thing he wanted to say tangling up in his mouth.   _Your body is for your use_  didn’t make sense, not really, and it also sounded uncomfortably Shitty-ish, something about objects and consent.   What it meant, what he wanted to say, was that it was so natural to him that Bitty’s body hurt from raising his legs above his head, that Jack loved that body, the things it did for its owner, the things his owner loved to do with it, that using it for sex was entirely a secondary consideration.  It wasn’t like Bittle needed to keep his body in peak readiness for sex at all times, picking and choosing his activities based on what Jack might want, and not on what he wanted to do.  But even… suggesting that as something that _wasn’t_  true would be bringing an uncomfortable spectre into the room.

“Nothing to apologize for,” he said, kissing Bitty between his shoulderblades.  He slid his hand over Bitty’s hip.  “Flexors in front hurt too?  Lift up for a minute and I can do them.”

“Actually…” Bitty turned his head to look at Jack.  “Can you do my quads too?  I can turn over.”

“Yeah,” Jack said, and had more gel on his hands before it occurred to him to say, “Or do you want to do them yourself?”

“Mm, no,” Bitty gritted out, as he turned over.  He favoured Jack with a grimacing attempt at a lazy smile, one arm thrown over his head.  “Might be the closest we get today.  I’ll take advantage.”

Jack smiled back at the joke, blushing at the same time.  Bitty was right; it was uncannily similar to sex, rubbing down the side of Bitty’s abdomen to his hips and the crease of his thigh.  Bitty was mostly flaccid, probably in too much pain to be really aroused.  Jack avoided eye contact until he’d finished Bitty’s front, though, just to avoid… distractions.

When he was done with the gel he capped the tube and went to the washroom to clean his hands off, while Bitty inched himself backwards and snagged pillows to prop himself up against the headboard.  When he was in place, Jack propped a bolster under his knees, then carefully laid cold backs under everywhere Bitty was sitting.  He kissed Bitty when he laid the last one in, then brought his laptop over for him, plugging it in by his sideboard.

He’d opened up his book, in bed beside his boyfriend, when he noticed Bitty was looking at him, hands still on his keyboard.  “What?” he asked.

Bitty smiled at him, saying, “Nothing,” as he pulled Jack in for a kiss.  Jack kissed him, twice, and then Bitty warmly said, “Thank you.”

Jack picked up one of Bitty’s hands, delicate and fine, and pressed it to his lips.  “My pleasure,” he said.

Barring a brief emergence when dinner arrived, they spent the rest of the day in bed.


End file.
